Sunday’s parliamentary election hold key to nation’s democratic future
[Istanbul] The stakes couldn’t be much higher in the most important election in Turkey’s recent history. Whether or not the leftist, pro-minorities Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) that emerged from the pro-Kurdish movement makes it past the ten per cent threshold required to enter parliament could have historical repercussions.
If the HDP, currently polling at or just above ten per cent, makes it into parliament, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will likely lose some of its 312 seats in the 550-seat parliament. That would mean the AKP would not be able to pursue its goal of writing a new constitution to controversially transform Turkey’s political system into a strong executive presidency.
If the HDP doesn’t pass the ten per cent barrier, one of the highest in the world, AKP candidates will get most of the 60 to 70 seats the HDP is contesting. This would possibly give the AKP the 330-seat supermajority needed to hold a referendum on changing the constitution.
İlter Turan, political science professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, says the style of executive presidency that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants lacks checks and balances and would further consolidate his power and erode democracy.
“The government has been heading in a highly authoritarian direction,” he told The Media Line.
Recently the powers of intelligence and police forces have been greatly strengthened, and judiciary independence weakened. At the same time, criminal complaints have been filed against over 100 people for “insulting” President Erdoğan, including a former beauty queen and children who have mentioned Erdoğan in Facebook posts. Journalists and cartoonists have gone to prison for the offense.
However, Professor Turan expresses doubt as to whether an executive presidency will be adopted, even with an AKP supermajority, because the system isn’t popular with voters and possibly not even within the AKP itself. A recent poll by the Gezici Research Company found that 77 per cent of Turks oppose an executive presidency.
“There seems to be no one, apart from a few people who would like to ingratiate themselves to the president, who have made a strong statement in favor of a presidential system,” Professor Turan says. “Even the support of the prime minister and others appears to be wishy-washy.”
The Islamist-rooted AKP, which has transformed Turkish politics since its astonishing sweep to power in 2002, is losing popularity for the first time thanks mostly to a stalled economy, problematic foreign policy and creeping authoritarianism. Though its support is falling, it’s still by far Turkey’s most popular party, polling between 40 and 45 per cent.
The AKP’s legacy is an economy that’s grown by 68 per cent, political stability and a peace process with Kurdish militants after a war that killed around 40,000, expanded rights for ethnic minorities and pious Muslims, more accessible healthcare and low-income housing, a massive reduction of systemic torture and extra-judicial killings, and the end of the military’s interference in politics. But its legacy also includes high-level corruption, police brutality, highly polarizing oratory and hostility to any kind of criticism, and ever-increasing attacks on freedom of speech and judicial independence.
The HDP, perhaps the only party besides the AKP with a highly-organized grassroots base, emerged from the Kurdish movement but has more recently styled itself as a leftist, pro-minorities party. Its campaign, notably vibrant and positive, focuses on rights for Turkey’s marginalized ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, many of whom are uncomfortable with the AKP’s religious conservativism.
The public face of the party is 42-year-old co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, a charismatic human rights lawyer from the mostly-Kurdish city of Diyarbakır.
“He’s like Magic,” says Amberin Zaman, The Economist’s Turkey correspondent who focuses on minority rights. She says Demirtaş has been instrumental in spreading the HDP’s support to non-Kurds.
“The juxtaposition of this young, witty, cheerful guy with growly, tired-looking Erdoğan is obviously having an impact,” Zaman says.
The HDP has recently been gaining votes from left-leaning young Turks who formerly voted for the secularist People’s Republican Party (CHP), as well as former AKP-supporting Kurds disappointed with the stagnant Peace Process between the government and militant Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) and recent comments made by President Erdoğan equating the PKK with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Burcu Gül is a 26-year-old language instructor and ethnic Turk from the country’s heterodox Alevi religious minority, a long-marginalized community often known for its opposition to the AKP.
Like most Alevis, Gül has always voted for the staunchly secularist CHP, the country’s second most popular party, but on Sunday she’ll be voting for the HDP. She reports that many of her friends and younger family members are also switching from CHP to HDP.
Gül is drawn by the party’s support for the LGBT population, mother-tongue language rights, and conscientious objection to military conscription, as well as Demirtaş’s conciliatory tone.
“He just seems nice,” Gül says. “I find him very intelligent and I like the things he says.”
Abdullah Teke, a 35-year-old Kurdish restaurant worker from Adıyaman in the southeast, used to support and work for the AKP in the past, but has also decided to vote HDP this time around.
“The work [the AKP] did previously seemed good to me both in terms of the Kurdish issue and religion. Then I saw that it was all lies,” Teke says, mentioning a lack of freedom and rising unemployment.
“Previously, my friends and family all voted AKP, but in this election, everyone will vote HDP.”
Teke says the HDP offers a fresh vision. “Their perspective is different. They see everyone equally: Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Muslims, Armenians, Christians, Alevis.”
Erdoğan, the former prime minister and head of the AKP, became president last summer after winning 52 per cent of the vote in Turkey’s first popular election for the largely ceremonial, non-partisan position. Using this vote as his mandate, Erdoğan has become a very active president and attracted a great deal of criticism for campaigning for the AKP, a practice strictly forbidden by the constitution.
“We’ve never really had a president who violated the constitution so blatantly,” says Professor Turan. He says state resources have been used by both Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to campaign for the AKP and bureaucrats have been ordered to attend AKP rallies.
President Erdoğan has also been criticized for his divisive rhetoric. He’s accused Dermirtaş of eating pork and the HDP of being un-Islamic, and has invoked slurs against Armenians, homosexuals and foreigners in his fiery attacks. During a recent rally in Bingöl, a town in the mostly Kurdish southeast, his speech was particularly harsh.
“He was very angry. He cursed us. He called us names and everything,” says Hişyar Özsoy, Bingöl’s HDP candidate. “They are terrorizing us, to put it simply.”
Özsoy says such toxic rhetoric encourages violence. The HDP has been attacked dozens of times since the start of campaigning, including a bombing of a political rally in Diyarbakır two days before the election that killed four people and injured over 350, and others that seemed to personally target Demirtaş.
Just hours after Erdoğan’s speech in Bingöl Hamdullah Öğe, a minibus driver for the HDP, was shot dead.
“The way that he was killed was very telling,” Özsoy tells The Media Line over the phone after attending the funeral. He points out that the man’s body was raked with dozens of bullet wounds. “This is a political murder.”
Turkey analyst Ziya Meral says the AKP’s rhetoric has been so nasty in the past two years because they’re trying to distract the electorate from questions about corruption and serious foreign policy and economic problems.
“Erdoğan regularly and desperately tries to find domestic and international enemies because at the moment the positive performance is not there,” Meral says.
Economic growth has slowed down from five per cent and higher to under three per cent, inflation, a budget deficit and worker deaths are climbing, the lira is in free-fall and unemployment has risen to over ten per cent, the highest in four years.
Meanwhile the AKP has built a $620 million 1,150-room presidential palace on protected forest land (ignoring the ruling of an administrative court to halt construction), where President Erdoğan and his wife drink tea allegedly costing $2,000 per kilogram.
Meral points out that the HDP has also been engaged in fear-mongering, warning that if the party doesn’t get into parliament, the AKP will go to war in Syria and arrest all of its critics at home.
He also says there’s one main reason holding back many from voting HDP.
“They like Demirtaş, they are excited about the prospect of Kurdish politics [becoming mainstream] in Turkey, but you still have the elephant in the room, and that’s the PKK. What happens to them? Will they put down their weapons?”
Amberin Zaman says the PKK undoubtedly exerts a strong influence over the HDP, but says this is all the more reason to empower the HDP.
“It’s only by bringing [the HDP] into the mainstream that the PKK’s influence will fade,” she says. “Why did the PKK come into existence in the first place? Precisely because the Kurds felt disenfranchised.”
Despite the violence and vitriol of this election campaign, Meral is quick to point out the positive developments.
“We have Armenian candidates running for three parties. That’s a phenomenal achievement,” he says, due to systematic discrimination and the ethnic Turkish nationalism that used to dominate politics.
“The fact that you have Turkish voters even considering Demirtaş as a good option for Turkey is an amazing development. Even five years ago, ten years ago, this would have been impossible.”
The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas speaks during an election rally on June 3, 2015, in Mardin, ahead of the legislative election on June 7, 2015. (Photo: ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/Getty Images)